82 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



nasium. Here he received a mental and spiritual shock which to 

 one of his temperament and early training had much to do with 

 the transformation of his unsophisticated piety and credulity to 

 dionysian iconoclasm. 



The influence of Ritschl, the celebrated philologist at Bonn and 

 Leipsic, was very great on the developing youth ^ but greater yet 

 that of the writings of Schopenhauer which he read in 1865, but 

 interpreted in the light of Darwin's theory of natural selection 

 with which he became acquainted during his first years at Bonn.^ 

 Schopenhauer interpreted in the light of the doctrine that progress 

 results from struggle for existence and survival of the fittest is thus 

 the very heart of Nietzscheism.^ 



Our author arrived at manhood in the flush of an intellectual 

 period when monistic philosophy and the scientific method were 

 being turned to a criticism of all of life's conventions and values. 

 The cataclysm in Nietzsche's moral and religious ideas and beliefs 

 made the conventional standards in these departments of life 

 values his special concern, and later his special point of attack, 

 and he became one of the most virulent and blasphemous of 

 moral and religious critics. 



In his attack on David Strauss in 1873, he charges that phi- 

 losopher and critic with lack of courage in failing to follow out the 

 Darwinian formula to its logical conclusion."* The same argu- 

 ment would apply to Darwin himself, and to Wallace, Fiske, Bal- 

 four and Huxley, as Dr. A. Lilly points out, for none of these apply 

 the biological formula in all its rigidity to social progress, or to the 

 development of moral sentiments. The consensus of opinion 

 today, however, among sociologists is with Darwin rather than 

 with Nietzsche and his defenders as we shall point out later. To 

 say that the law of natural selection does not apply rigidly in 

 social evolution is not to pit man against the cosmic process, for 

 man with his intelligence and will is a part of that process, so 

 also are society and the social sentiments.^ The reasoning of the 

 Nietzscheans is far from conclusive.® 



* The Philosophy of Nietzsche, p. 16. ' Ihid., p. 13. 

 ' Cf. Mencken, pp. 64 ff., loi f., 138 f., esp. 142 n. * Ihid., p. 30. 



•* For Dnmmiond's position as against Huxley see his Ascent of Man, ch. I. 



• Introduction to The Case Against Wagner, etc., cf, Mencken, p. 140. 



